Taking Fantasia : A Disney Fanfiction

Chapter 111: The Cyborg's Sacrifice

Chapter 111: The Cyborg’s Sacrifice

Ariel would always remember how the sun rose that day. Shyly. Gently. Unobtrusively.

Silvery gold brush strokes painted the bottom of the sky. It was the faintest, most delicate light Ariel had ever seen. If a breeze should stir, she was sure the colors would fade. But as the pale rays touched Ariel’s shoulders, she fell. Fluidly as falling dew, she slid down the trident. And kneeling in the ocean, Ariel bowed before Fantasia.

The ocean stirred. Ariel closed her eyes, willing the sea’s energy into her exhausted soul. She had only the strength to listen. She listened to the tide and let the rhythm expand into her cluttered mind. Slowly, her thoughts synchronized with the ocean’s cadence.

They did it. They did it. They took Fantasia.

Ariel’s heart lifted with the dawn.

Then, she heard it.

 Dissidence. An anguished, heaving sound. Half metal. Half man. Half alive. Half…

Ariel turned. Her brow rest against the trident. Painfully, she searched the ocean. The waves were bright with pastel diamonds. Ariel squinted. There was something there. Slowly, shapes solidified from the light as something horrible, bent, bedraggled, and broken dragged through the waves.

Ariel lifted a hand. She slipped. Trembling against the trident, she shielded her eyes. And she looked.

John Silver looked back. He was…gruesome. Droplets rolled like pearls over his robotic shell. But each metal part sagged, hanging loosely from the cyborg’s flesh. Seawater filtered through the gaps, clogging internal mechanisms. Gears hissed, wires smoked, and a dark, iridescent oil bled from his artificial joints.

Silver coughed. Facial skin strained against his orbital socket. The robotic eye sparked. Cruddy oil squirted over his teeth. Without control of his robotic arm, Silver limped over the limb like a cane. Wincing with each dislocation, he pushed only with the ascending tide.

Despite Silver’s treachery, Ariel pitied him. Clinging to her trident, she wondered why the cyborg did not use his muscular side to climb to shore.

 Then she saw why.

 Cradled in Silver’s arm, protected against his chest, was Jim. Neck extended and eyes closed, Jim hung without breath. But the cyborg held him above the ocean and within the fading vision of his robotic eye.

  Jim!

Ariel tried to call. Nothing. Nothing happened. Panic hit her like lightning. Wrenching against the trident, she reached. She fell. Sinking to her knees, she screamed.

Jim! Jim! JIM! JIM!

Nothing. Ariel clutched her throat. She raked until the skin was raw. But her voice was gone. Empty as a shell.

JIM!

 “Ariel! By sea and stars! That’s my Ariel!”

  Ariel heaved through the water. Digging the trident into the sand, she dragged for the cyborg.

JIM! JIM! JIM!

“Ariel!”

 “Admiral wait --- look! It’s – it’s ---”

  “The cyborg!”

 “My son! Jim! That’s my son!”

  “The cyborg! The traitor!”

 Ariel sobbed without sound, choking on waves. Screams – her own voice – filled her mind.

JIM! JIM! JIM!

 “Ariel!

 “The cyborg!”

  “Get him!”

 Silver stopped. He looked at Ariel.

And the pity she’d felt for him was transposed as Silver gazed at the little mermaid screaming in silence.

  But even as Ariel screamed, something happened.

 As if he could hear her, Jim Hawkins opened his eyes. They were bleary, unfocused. But still, Jim murmured unconsciously into the cyborg’s shoulder.

“…Ariel?”

  “GET HIM!”

 Bodies flashed by Ariel, water splashing from their heels. Fleetingly she saw their faces, parents of her friends, before they swarmed the cyborg like wild dogs.

But if Silver was afraid, he seemed not so. Only the smallest, saddest smile pulled taut against the metal biting into his skin as Jim Hawkins was taken away, cuffs were clamped to his wrist, and Ariel was wrapped in the arms of her father.

 “Ariel! My baby! My little girl! Ariel!”

Jim, Silver, and the pale dawn disappeared as Ariel buried silent tears into her father, the trident still glimmering between her fingers.

 There they might have stayed, surrounded by ocean and sunlight, had not a voice called from shore.

 “Admiral! Come! Come! You…you won’t believe...!”